The first festival we went to was only small but worth talking about. The bee festival!

Early on in the year there was a bee festival (for the of promotion bees) near Townley Hall (in Burnley only half an hourS drive away from where I live). There was a few activities on,lots of bands…. Some people were dressed up as bees too-

This festival was here because they say there aren’t as many bees as there used to be (I am not sure if that is true but anyway). I found a (Swallows) nest on one of the buildings and got some great pictures of the eggs and the bird it self -.

Last year I had a guitar teacher named “Mark” (a.k.a Zero). He was here with his daughter also named Jasmine. We got along very well. (Later on they both took me to a theme park,which is for another blog post)
The second and biggest festival was Beat Herder!

Beat-Herder festival is very popular around this area, every year there is approximately 10 000 people there. We went to this festival last year as well. Each year they use a letter from “Beat Herder” as a fancy dress theme. Last year it was the letter T and I dressed up as Tiger Lily (from Peter Pan). This year it was the letter H. I dressed up as Harry Potter (which is one of my favourite films). Mum went as Harlequin and so did the ultimate traveller (Ian).

My brother had a T-shirt on saying Harley Davidson. Three of my cousins went as well and my auntie. I camped in a Tipi with Saul(my cousin).

There are some childrens’ activities near the ” Ladybird Tent” and you can also borrow lots of different circus equipment such as; the diabolo, the hula hoop… There’s also a ferris wheel ( that has a great view of Pendle hill and the boundaries in-out of the festival. There’s some dodgems (a.k.a bumper cars) and Waltzers. Me and my cousin went on it to give it a go. It went fast and I was a bit dizzy but other than at I really enjoyed the ride. Here are a couple of other things I saw –

There are lots of food and drink stalls to choose from. There’s also lots of stages and a fortress and also a bit of woodland that you can go in with a proper street.
It’s a full weekend festival. The main day and night is on Saturday. Saturday is the day which you dress up on. There were some bands like; Happy Mondays, Boney M, Macka B…  The crowds were huge –

These are some of the costumes that I took pictures of;

On the last day of the festival (Sunday) I went to the stone circle (man-made and new) and put a blanket on the ground and put a few dreamcatchers on a blanket on the ground with a price for them. ( In some Native American cultures, a dreamcatcher  form of the word for “spider”  is a handmade object based on a willow hoop, on which is woven a loose net or web. The dreamcatcher is then decorated with sacred items such as feathers and beads.) Me and my cousin waited for about half an hour. In the first five minutes I already sold one and three or four more afterwards. I sold them for £5 each.

The third and last festival was called Cloudspotting! We attended this festival last year as well. It’s a lot smaller than Beat-Herder but more of a family-friendly festival. It’s set in the midst of “Gisburn” Forest. There are lots of walking and bike trails to go on. They are mainly set for mountain bikes.
The Ultimate Traveller made a few yurts

in the past and instead of paying to go to the festival he just sets it up for the festival to use as a first aid or information point. So we get the tickets for free. We also did this at Beat-Herder.
There are lots of activities to do for toddlers and older children. I went on the climbing wall like I did last year.

The other main one that I did this year was the tie dye session. Since I arrived first at the tent and I was one of the oldest and her assistant had a hangover she asked me if I would help so I did.
The kids picked out some shapes they wanted to go on their T-shirt and then put them on the shirt and sprayed them.hung them up to dry for a couple of hours and came back for them. The lady  “organizing” it helped them spray it and so on.
All I had to do was get the T-shirts sizes out of the packets and find the right size,take the money and give them change if needed and clean the shapes so they could be re-used again. Two older girls helped me as well. The people had to pay £2 for the T-shirts but since I helped her I got to do it for free.

Later on on the weekend I saw her shop with these really good tie dye T-shirts. They were selling them for £10 each. But she gave me 50% discount. So all in all it was worth-while doing that session.
My friend Jasmine (from the bees festival) was there so I hung out with her a lot.

This is a picture of one of the activities which I didn’t attend –

This is the bubble man which my brother loved-

Zero,Jasmine,Amos,Alison and myself went on a long bike ride down to the reservoir and we (Alison and Amos took a different path and got there before us) ended up taking the wrong path up and down hill so it took us a very long time to get back.
When we came to a wide track Zero said he was going to find out where we were and then he shot off. We didn’t know where he had gone so we just kept cycling down the track. After 10 minutes or so a big red van with Zero driving it came down the road. He had cycled all the way back to the festival got his van and came back for us. He said he overtook Alison and Amos as well (the Ultimates Travellers friends).
These are some of the best bands (from my point of view); Sky Valley Mistress (a teenage band from Blackburn),  Merry Hell (which was probably my favourite), Panjenix (which is the band that Zero plays in),

Baxter Rhodes, Colorama, Randolph’s Leap,Sweet Baboo,Bird to Beast,Drop the Floor, Melt Yourself Down.